Articles having a head and a shank, such as bolts, screws, studs, rivets and the like, are extremely difficult to rapidly feed generally axially one at time from a succession of articles in generally parallel and side-by-side relationship. Because they have so many edges, such articles are highly susceptible to becoming caught, jammed or hung up in the feeding apparatus. Moreover, difficulty in rapidly feeding such articles one at a time is significantly increased if they must be fed head first to the power tool.
Many devices have been previously devised for rapidly and repetively feeding such articles one at time, but few of such devices have been successful in mass production and assembly operations. However, one device which has been satisfactory and highly commercially successful is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,363,573 issued on Dec. 14, 1982. This device has a movable metering arm which delivers one article at a time to a pilot passageway from which it is propelled shank end first through a hose to a power tool by a stream of compressed air discharged into the pilot passageway. While this device is highly satisfactory for most applications, it cannot deliver workpieces head end first to a power driver.